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NDP wants Speaker to decide whether two Tory MPs should be suspended

House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer. Scheer is engaged in a process now to help establish a system for dealing with complaints, ranging from harassment to sexual assault.Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

The NDP said Monday it is prepared to let the Speaker decide the fate of two Conservative MPs who have refused to comply with an order from Elections Canada requiring them to file corrected election returns.

The party is taking a middle path between the Liberals, who have called for an immediate suspension of Manitoba Conservatives James Bezan and Shelly Glover, and the Conservatives, who argue that the matter should be settled by the courts before the two MPs are suspended.

NDP democratic reform critic Craig Scott, a former law professor, started his densely argued 45-minute speech by chiding Speaker Andrew Scheer for failing to table the letters that started the parliamentary showdown.

On May 23 and 24, Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand wrote to the Scheer to inform him that Bezan and Glover had failed to provide corrections as ordered, an apparent violation of the Elections Act that triggers a suspension.

Both Bezan and Glover will have exceeded their election spending limits if they accept Elections Canada’s rules around how to account for election sign expenses, which could trigger penalties. They say they followed the rules.

MPs only learned of the letters from Mayrand when Postmedia News and the Ottawa Citizen uncovered legal challenges filed by Glover and Bezan in Manitoba.

Scott said MPs shouldn’t have learned of the letters from the media, and said Scheer ought to have tabled them.

“While there is no express obligation to table … there is nonetheless an implied obligation. This flows from the relationship between the Speaker and the House and from the substantive issues addressed in the letter.”

On the letters, the NDP are in agreement with the Liberals, who last week asked Scheer to table them, which he refused to do.

Scott seemed to agree with the Liberals in saying that the MPs should be immediately suspended from voting, but concluded by saying the Speaker should decide the matter.

The argument hinges on the conflicting interpretations of the intersection of the Elections Act, the supremacy of parliamentary privilege and the legal principle of sub-judice, which holds that legislatures should refrain from interfering with matters before the court.

One section of the Elections Act calls for the immediate suspension for the MPs while another allows for them to challenge the chief electoral officer in court, and the act says nothing about what should happen to them while the court is considering the matter.

Scott argued that administrative suspensions do not typically require a final ruling from a court, and said the MPs “do not have the right to have their suspensions stayed in the meantime.”

“One way or another the two MPs should not be sitting or voting so long as either fail to provide corrected returns … or they have not yet secured a court judgment in their favour,” Scott said.

It is worrying that the two MPs wouldn’t co-operate with Elections Canada, Scott said, and worrying that the party lawyer has been confrontational with the agency.

He also cited a 1966 precedent, when a Speaker ruled that the House, not the Speaker, should vote on the suspension of an MP who didn’t file corrected returns.

In the end, though, Scott concluded that the Speaker should settle the matter, since neither the Elections Act nor the standing orders of the House are clear.

“Suspension likely does need a procedure within the House beyond a decision of the Speaker himself, but there may be mechanisms to achieve this beyond an immediate and direct putting of the matter to a majority vote in the House,” he said.

Scheer will now take some time to consider the matter before ruling on it.